Anger as Facebook in line for $429m tax refund despite $1 billion profit
Despite recording annual profits of over a billion dollars in 2012, Facebook will scoop a giant tax refund in its homeland, much to the chagrin of tax activists in the US.
The social network announced earnings of $1.06 billion (UK£0.63, AUD$1.029) at the end of last year, but tax breaks mean they'll also recover a $429m (UK£276, AUD$416) net tax refund from Uncle Sam.
How, you ask? Well because of its IPO, Facebook in May 2012 was able to apply for a whopping tax break, covering stock options for executives, while refunds from earlier years also contributed to the pot.
The company saved $1.03 billion (UK£0.66, AUD$1) in federal and state taxes because of the tax break, while the same loophole will allow it to avoid paying another $2.17 billion (UK£1.4, AUD$2.1) in years to come.
Liability becomes profit
Facebook claimed to have a "tax liability" of $559 (UK£360, AUD$542) million for 2012, but the "excess tax benefits" listed above flips that liability into a tidy little profit for the publicly traded company. Facebook's filing has angered US tax research and lobbying group Citizens for Tax Justice, who pointed out the figures in its detailed analysis of Facebook's end-of-year report. However, as strange as it seems for a company as large as Facebook to be receiving cash back from the government, as Bloomberg Businessweek pointed out, the company isn't breaking any rules, just employing a little "accounting wizardry." "Companies like Facebook are allowed to treat the cost of non-cash compensation, such as stock options, as an expense that reduces profits, essentially the way they treat cash compensation such as salaries," it said. If you don't mind encountering a little financial jargon, check out CTJ's analysis of the situation for some eye-opening insight into how tax legislation can be used to benefit the corporate elite.
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Windows Blue update to 'build on and improve' Windows 8
Microsoft has revealed more details about its reported Windows Blue project, which promises to bring regular updates to its Windows 8 operating system.
According to a February 15 job posting on the Microsoft Careers site, the software giant is seeking an engineer to join its Windows Core Experience Team.
That part of the operation will be working on improving the centrepiece of the new Windows UI, including the start screen, application lifecycle, windowing and personalisation, according to the post.
This seems to suggest that Windows Blue will bring more than a few tweaks under the bonnet and offer tangible visual enhancements to the Windows 8 software.
Centerpiece of the new Windows UI
Indeed, the post mentions Windows Blue by name and says the updates will look to 'build on and improve Windows 8' as time goes on. An excerpt reads: "We're looking for an excellent, experienced SDET to join the Core Experience team in Windows Sustained Engineering (WinSE). The Core Experience features are the centerpiece of the new Windows UI, representing most of what customers touch and see in the OS, including: the start screen; application lifecycle; windowing; and personalization. Windows Blue promises to build and improve upon these aspects of the OS, enhancing ease of use and the overall user experience on devices and PCs worldwide." It is also thought that Windows Blue updates will be extended to multiple Microsoft platforms, including Windows 8 server, the mobile OS Windows Phone 8 and applications like Sky Drive and Hotmail. Indeed another post on Microsoft's job site mentions Windows Phone Blue by name, so that is definitely on the horizon. The plan from Microsoft's point of view is reportedly to move towards a more regular update pace, rather than the three year gap that separated Windows 7 and Windows 8, with little improvements in between. Apple has enjoyed great success in this arena, gradually adding new strings to the bow of Mac OS X every year, through its feline-themed updates.
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Nokia isn't planning a tablet launch at MWC, analyst claims
Nokia will not be unleashing a Windows RT tablet at this month's Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona, industry analysts have claimed.
Rumours have been flying around for months regarding Nokia's impending appearance on the tablet scene, but it seems like the Finnish giant may be waiting until later this year to parade its first slate.
Instead, according to Strategy Analysts, the company will be focussing on cementing its position at the top of the Windows Phone 8 ladder when MWC kicks off on February 25.
A post on the Strategy Analysts website said it had made "extensive channel checks" and understood that "Nokia will not unveil a tablet with a Microsoft operating system at this year's Mobile World Congress."
Smart to focus on smartphones
Earlier this month the purported leak of a champagne-coloured slate, gave Nokia fans hope that a device running Windows RT would be unveiled with a quickness. Back in December, supply chain sources in Taiwan had predicted the arrival of the long-awaited Nokia offering in February, but if the analysts are correct, those estimates will have been wide of the mark. The post continued: "We believe Nokia's strategy will be "smartphones first" for MWC this year. "And rightly so. Nokia will want to expand its Lumia smartphone range and solidify its growing leadership of the global WP8 market. Tablet fans will need to be a little more patient!" Regardless of the presence of a tablet, we're excited to see what the somewhat resurgent Nokia has up its sleeve in just over a week's time. TechRadar will be live in Barcelona bringing you the launches as they happen.
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Buying Guide: Best tablet keyboards: Bluetooth extras for iPad, Android or Windows
A tablet might be irresistible, but bashing away at a virtual keyboard on a touchscreen certainly is not. OK, so tapping out the odd message or email is fine, but anyone after serious productivity on an iPad or Android tablet needs a good add-on keyboard.
Capable of creating a mobile and compact office that cuts down on clutter and weight, wireless Bluetooth keyboards come both separately and in cases custom-made to suit specific tablets - most often the iPad, although iPad mini products are beginning to emerge, too.
Or you could buck the trend and buy a netbook. No? Oh well, we tried. On with our roundup of the best keyboards for tablet PCs then...
1. Logitech K810 Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard - £90/US$100 (around AU$135)
Logitech makes a play for the best and most versatile Bluetooth keyboard around for any kind of use - mobile or desktop - with its slick illuminated K810. The headline feature is a thing of wonder; as your finger approaches the keys they subtly light up from behind, only to fade out a second or so after your pinkies have left the letters. LED-powered so using negligible power despite this trickery (its mini USB-fed battery is slated to last for over a week), the K810 nevertheless peaks not with flashy features but solid usability.
The keys are soft to touch and nicely spaced to avoid mistakes and mis-types, with Windows 8 keys included, too, though it's the trio of Bluetooth connections that are as much of a standout feature; up to three LED indicators are lit as your pair up to three devices with the Logitech K810, which makes switching between a tablet, phone and desktop PC a cinch.
Fashioned from brushed aluminium and weighing around 335g (11.82oz), the K810 is reference quality in performance as well as price.
Read our Logitech K810 Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard review
2. Belkin Portable Keyboard Case for iPad mini - £70/US$80 (around AU$107)
Designed specifically for Apple's micro-pad, this 276g (9.74oz) rubberised plastic case wraps around an iPad mini and instantly creates a thoroughly portable office.
Gripping its guest at the corners though being careful to leave a gap for the iPad mini's headphones slot and a cut-out for the 5 megapixel camera, a magnet ensures the whole thing stays securely closed.
It pairs over Bluetooth very easily, and the accurate, comfortable keyboard also operates basic iOS functions. The slight downside - apart from the high price - is that the keyboard isn't quite as sturdy as it could be, and if hammered at it does arch inwards. It's said to last 155 hours on a single charge.
3. Cygnett KeyPad Wireless Bluetooth keyboard - £40/US$80 (around AU$60)
One of the smallest and best value keyboards around, this decidedly plasticky effort from Cygnett measures just 218 x 91mm (8.58 x 3.58 inches( and weighs 220g (7.76oz). In the box is a retractable mini USB cable for recharging.
Sitting fairly high off a surface at about 17mm (0.67 inches), the Cygnett is about the same size as the Belkin though isn't particularly aimed at the iPad mini. Suited to use with any Bluetooth device, this solidly made product nevertheless doesn't put quite enough space between individual buttons.
Mistakes do creep in, it's true, though if you use it for five minutes it gets much easier, though it's a touch fiddly to use elsewhere, too. Pairing with a Bluetooth gadget involves tampering with what looks like a 'reset' button on the back of the keyboard, which necessitates finding a pen.
4. Archos Ultrathin Bluetooth Keyboard Cover for iPad - £50 (around US$77/AU$75)
At just 5mm (0.20 inches) deep, this is as thin as it gets in the small world of Bluetooth keyboard covers for iPads. Weighing a paltry 240g (8.47 inches), this QWERTY keyboard clips onto an iPad 2, 3 or 4 in an almost identical magnetic fashion to the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, though Archos claims that it's almost as slim as the ubiquitous SmartCover.
It's different to the Logitech in other ways, too, using a fold-down kickstand to prop up an iPad instead of a canal - a process perfected by using the iPad's magnets once again - and though it has an aluminium outer to match an iPad, the keyboard is white. It's destined to last for over two months between charges.
5. MobileFun Flexible Bluetooth Mini Keyboard - £30/US$48/AU$40
Though not exactly executive-grade, this roll-up keyboard is something of a traveller's gem. Best thought of as an occasional weapon for backpackers - perhaps for emailing sessions or keeping a travel journal - this is super-lightweight gear at a mere 95g (3.35oz), and it rolls up to the size of a Coke can.
Working only with Apple products despite being purely Bluetooth-fuelled, this roll-up is a fully featured keyboard with everything from caps lock and F numbers to fast forward and print screen (a little hopeful, that one). The buttons are a millimetre or so too small, but mistypes - while common - are acceptable, primarily since typing fast is possible, and there are cursor keys and a backspace key to make editing easy. It comes with a retractable mini USB cable for charging, though it lasts for weeks.
6. Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio for iPad - £120/US$130/AU$150
A solar-powered wraparound keyboard case for the iPad 2, 3 & 4, this Logitech is made to move. With a solar panel on its front capable of providing enough keyboard power for a stunning two years, the Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio aims to provide protection as well as a convenient keyboard.
It uses a magnet to instantly switch an iPad on and off when the folio is opened, and can act as an iPad stand in two different positions; the first uses a groove above the keyboard for work, and the second, more laid-back position uses grooves either side of the space bar for movies.
It's expensive, and there are better keyboards available, but if you're after an occasional keyboard and a clean experience, this could be ideal; the solar power makes this the only Bluetooth keyboard around that doesn't need to travel with a micro USB cable in tow for occasional recharging.
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Interview: How the co-creator of MySQL came to love databases
Monty Widenius, the co-creator of the MySQL database, became a multimillionaire when MySQL was sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008. But Monty subsequently left MySQL just before Sun was acquired by Oracle, and hired many of the original developers to work on his fork, MariaDB.
We met up with him in Portland to discover why the free software philosophy matters, what went wrong at Sun and why the history of MySQL contains more drama and intrigue than season one of Dallas.
Linux Format: We've always found databases the hardest subject to engage with.
Monty Widenius: I know, I had exactly the same thing the first time I engaged with databases. I hated it.
LXF: What changed? And how has it kept your interest for so long?
MW: It actually started in '81, when I was employed by a company, and it used a version of BASIC that had a way that you could access data. They asked me to move these to TRS-80 with TRS-80 BASIC, and you had no database whatsoever, and nothing to store data.
This was just before I went to college, and I was wondering one day how to store data on a disc so that you can retrieve it. Then I came up with a way to do that, which I later in college found out to be called hashing, but I didn't know that. And, actually, we based the whole payment system program on that.
LXF: So you were teaching yourself?
MW: Yeah, everything. When I went to college I did study computer science, and basically I learned one or two algorithms; then I learned what I'd found out myself was called hashing. But I mostly researched it.
LXF: When did the free software philosophy become part of it?
MW: When I went to UNIX - that was in '84, I think. In '85 there were cruises between Sweden and Finland where Minix was announced, and I was on one of these cruises together with David Axmark, the other founder of MySQL. We had already started to use Emacs and looked at GCC, then we kind of got more involved and started to use it more and more.
I started to work with companies who were using Solaris. Finding all the Solaris shells was quite awkward. So we replaced all of that with Bash and GCC and everything else. That was kind of when I got really involved using open source, and because we started to go more and more to open source conferences, almost once a year, and we wanted to give something back, me and David.
However, we never had something that we thought would be useful enough so that we'd get lots of users, and we also didn't think that we'd be able to support it. Just giving out software that you can't support, that would just be adding to the pile that wouldn't be useful, and there are lots of companies that do that; and so we were searching for something that we could work on full-time, and afford to work on full-time.
So, when I created MySQL in '94, on top of the old project that was basically still rubbish, we noticed that it could be useful for us. Then we released it; then it took off.
LXF: Was that the first time you recognised that an open source licence would be beneficial for the project?
MW: We were a consulting firm, and our main thought was that the decision for doing the release was that we would not lose money compared to what we were doing by releasing this. If someone takes the software, it's still big and complex, and they'd hire us as consultants anyway. So really, we wouldn't lose money.
LXF: Lots of people would think you would, though.
MW: But back then people were really scared about releasing code, because anyone could just take it. But we released MySQL under a dual licence, so that we could be sure that if somebody wanted to use it free, and in-house, it was perfectly fine. We didn't care. But nobody could make money with it without having to involve us.
LXF: You didn't use the GPL?
MW: The GPL did exist, but we weren't using it, because that would be a big risk for a small company; so we had a licence that basically said 'you can use the source code, you can use it for anything, but if you make money with it please contact us and then we'll figure out how to do it'. And you could also buy a commercial version to do whatever you want.
LXF: So you did get people calling and saying they'd like to use it commercially?
MW: Yes. We made the licence more free in the middle of '98. We had a Windows version and then we said the Windows version - that Linux would be more free. The Windows version, we said that this is shareware licence. A shareware program. You should pay us $200 after one month if you use it, or get a very bad conscience. Your choice.
Then we had a web page on which people could register, and then they could send in a fax to pay $200, and the fax machine went continuously. So we were able to grow on that strategy from two people to 15 in 2000 by just the Windows version.
Then in '99 I got so many complaints from people: asking why we weren't using the GPL. By then we thought that we had so much money in the bank we could afford to take a hit.
LXF: You still saw the GPL as taking a hit?
MW: Yes, because as before, if you made money with our software you had to come to us. We didn't know that if we released MySQL under the GPL that people would be able to use it without coming to us. And our income did drop for two months to more than half, but within two months we were up to where we were originally. That's because we had such a big user base, and people were so happy with the GPL, so we kinda got more customers because of that. But in the initial start-up phase, we could never have had that.
LXF: Would you do the same now?
MW: We would do it again now with a dual licence, which we call a business source, which means that you say that for the next three years, here are the rules under which you can use the software. You can have any rules, it's not open source. After three years, this becomes BSD and then you can use it freely. And that means people can use it. You get the same trust as with open source.
LXF: Like a mental investment?
MW: They are not going away, you can still fix bugs and everything else. You just know that if you use it for the next three years, then you have to kind of give something back. And then the agreement can be something that makes sense for a business, because then you are committing to open source, but you are also telling your users that you need money to be able to pull it off. And I think that is a reasonable mix.
LXF: How long have you been investing in open source projects?
MW: Investing, or working with it? I mean, with MySQL I have been investing my time since '94. When I got money from Sun, I created an investment company, so we are now investing in community-driven technical projects, which can be open source or not; and I've been doing that since 2008.
LXF: How has that worked over the years? Are you seeing better ideas? Are you seeing a consistent movement of people wanting to get funding for community-driven projects?
MW: We are one of the unique investment companies that invest into community-driven projects, so we get lots of ideas. We get about three proposals a week. But most of those are ideas, and being an investment company where we've got some money from the European bank, we have a kind of commitment that we want to be sure that we at least have a possibility to get the money back.
So we can't just invest in ideas, because our expertise is not creating the community but enhancing the community. That's what I did at MySQL. I was creating it, but that takes time so we want to invest in companies that have already proved themselves. And there are not that many that have active communities who are growing. We have been able to find those 15 companies to invest in or look at investing in it.
LXF: What changed when Sun bought it? Why didn't Sun leave you to carry on as before, because it was obviously working?
MW: The problem was that MySQL was a company of two different kind of brains. You had many who were planning to do an IPO and then start to do closed-source system as well. They couldn't do that before they did the IPO or the company was sold, because I had to share the agreement.
LXF: So there were people within MySQL who wanted to do closed source software?
MW: Yeah, well this agreement said they can do that, and they kind of twisted and they did MySQL Money Administrator on the side that was closed source that they shouldn't have been able to do, but they kind of got the board to agree to that. So I was not happy with that.
LXF: This was before Sun?
MW: This was before Sun. I did know that when they got sold we would have to start pushing closed features, and I was not happy with that, but when you get investors, as the founder, you only have your say until the company is sold or there's an IPO. After that, your say is gone. So I was very happy when Sun bought us, because I hoped that the conflict between the management would go away, or at least would diminish.
Then you had our developer organisation, which was mostly pro-open source. They wanted to work on an open source project that did good for the world and still made enough money to pay our salaries. Some of these management influences had started to work on the developer organisation because they put people in charge of driving away people like me who worked for open source, so that they could start to do more closed source.
So emotionally I ground almost to a halt. I thought that, as Sun was a company that knew how development was done, they would keep the developer organisation separate from the management organisation, and basically have those as two things, and they should take the developer organisation and take it into Sun and let them handle it the way that open source projects should be done. But they assumed that everything was perfect, and all of the conflict that I hoped would be solved kind of escalated.
LXF: Why did Sun buy MySQL?
MW: Because MySQL had a user base of 17,000–20,000 customers, and some of those were the same as Sun had - Sun was different. By being able to do a full stack together with the database, Sun could access many more customers than they could do before, and MySQL could also, by having Sun as our backer, we could get into places we couldn't go into before, and Sun could go and sell hardware to them.
So they saw that with the MySQL business, which was only worth $70m a year, they could combine that with Sun's business of software and hardware, they could make a much bigger business. And I think that was kind of true, and they should have been able to do that. But the problem was to keep things too separate, so it didn't work out like that.
The other thing that I really believed could help Sun was that they did a lot of open source, but they never made money on those projects - they hoped that because we were able to make money with open source we should be able to go and teach their people to do that.
LXF: That's odd. We always thought that Sun weren't too hot with open source…
MW: They were good in sponsoring projects and getting it done, but they were not good at making money on those. They never made money on OpenOffice.org, but they did develop it for six or seven years.
LXF: But it barely changed in that time…
MW: Yeah, but that was kind of the developer groups and not Sun's fault. The problem for Sun, possibly, was that they weren't able to make money from it, so they thought that the MySQL team might be able to make money, so they would come and teach them to do that. The problem was that they (Sun) started to talk with the management, who just told Sun that: "You should do closed addon features for all your products and make money that way".
Sun said that that's not how they do open source, but they started to get bustled by that; but then me and my other people went into Sun's developer meetings and told them why management's ideas wouldn't work and they believed us, so that kind of never happened. But I wanted to help Sun to make more money with open source, and that was one of the reasons I joined Sun.
I was working with Greg Papadopoulos, their CTO, to get Sun to be more open source and involve more with the community, because instead of participating with a project that they liked, Sun would create their own project because they could do better and then they'd release it as open source. While the right way would be to get involved in the existing project, and we tried to change the mindset with them.
They kind of got that but then they got into financial troubles. Sun was a strange company in the sense that, at the top level, it was extremely good. But the next level, they were only protecting their own turf, so you had people working in one department that had to do their quota, and they knew that if they helped the other department, they could double that department's sales, but that in the process it would cost them 10% of their sales, so they were not helping each other at all.
They were basically only saving their own turf, so they could get no co-operation between their departments if it could mean a little decrease in what they were doing. This was the middle layer.
The underlying layer, the developers… Sun has one of the best groups of developers I've ever met. They were what kept Sun working as long as it did. But the middle-management, just under the top, that was the one that destroyed Sun.
LXF: So it's at that point that Sun was bought by Oracle?
MW: Yes. It was a shame that Oracle was able to do that for a much lower price than what Sun was worth. But the other side to the story, one of the reasons why Oracle wanted to buy Sun, was MySQL. They made it clear to the EU that if they didn't get MySQL, they wouldn't buy Sun.
LXF: Did Oracle want to buy MySQL simply to stop people using it?
MW: Yeah. They wanted to have control, but by buying MySQL they also had to agree in some sense to the European Union that for five years they would continue developing it. They also said that they would spend $20 million a year in development.
LXF: But they're never going to make more money from MySQL than from their own databases.
MW: Of course not. But they also have the problem that they didn't expect me to do a fork. Because that is not economically viable to do that. I've already spent €4 million on keeping MariaDB alive, without having any chance to do any big win on that. In the best case, if things work very well, I can get my money back, but not more. But people don't do that. So they never expected that to happen.
The other thing is also that they've kept a very good face on the outside of doing something with MySQL and even if they'd lost most of their good engineers, they still have the InnoDB team, and that is working very well, the NDB team who are doing their MySQL cluster, that is also working, and the application team is somewhat working.
The other teams are not really working. And they also lost control of the source code, because they don't have people who understand it, so they know they're doing strange things which causes problems for us when they do a merge because we can't accept all their changes. We have to basically redo a lot.
But fortunately, I was able to bring all the best developers into MariaDB. We are 18 people as of late July 2012, and we have all the important architects of MySQL - the people who did almost all the important features are all working for MariaDB.
LXF: How different is it now in comparison to when you started MySQL?
MW: All of Sun's customers were very scared of what would happen with their support contracts - all the sales people went out and sold 3-5 year support agreements to all the most important and heaviest MySQL users. Which means that for 3-4 years they didn't have to go out and buy support from somebody else.
So we only use MySQL code under GPL and the main revenue is support; you couldn't find the customers. So basically I had to fund everything myself until these contracts run out. We're starting to get customers now, but it took us all this time just to break even.
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Review: Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP 16GB
What's the VLP moniker stand for? Why Very Low Profile, of course. The Sport VLP modules measure just 18mm from the base of the electrical contacts to the top of the heatsink, or to put it another way, once the sticks are installed they just come up to the top of the memory latch.
Not the raised bit you use to lower the latch with either, but the latch body itself - whichever way you decide to look at it that's remarkably short.
As with the company's Ballistix Tactical LP range the Sport VLP line-up currently only consists of DDR3 PC3-12800, 1,600MHz modules running at 1.35V. Crucial currently offers these modules in single 4GB and 8GB density modules or as 8GB, 16GB or 32GB memory kits.
The kit we reviewed here is the 16GB set, which comprises a pair of 8GB unbuffered NON-ECC modules in tandem.
On boot up, the Asus motherboard, we use for the testing, reported the modules as running at 1,333MHz with 9-9-9-24 timings at 1.35V if the memory settings in the BIOS were set to Auto. Changing to the XMP settings the memory was reported at correctly at 1,600MHz with 9-9-9-24 timings - another clear reminder that you should always check memory timings in the BIOS and adjust accordingly.
The XMP shizzle thankfully takes all the hassle out of configuring the latency timings yourself.
Clock-happy
Just like the Tactical LP modules these wee Sport VLP modules are fairly sprightly at their stock settings, but also remarkably compliant when it comes to overclocking. Keeping the default timings and voltage and just changing the speed in the motherboard BIOS options to 1,866MHz resulted in a non-booting board, but a slacking off of the latency settings to 11-11-11-28 1T (still at the stock 1.35v) got the memory running rock solid at 1,866MHz. Keeping the same CAS11 settings but altering the speed to 2,133MHz caused the motherboard, again, not to boot, but increasing the voltage to 1.6V got us to a rock solid (even when being pushed hard in the benchmark tests) 2,133MHz. No matter what we tried to get a bit more out of our review modules, 2,133MHz remained the fastest stable speed we could achieve, but as with all things memory related, you might get lucky and find modules that turn out to be a bit more obliging.Benchmarks
Memory bandwidth performance Sisoft Sandra: Gigabytes per second: Higher is better SPORT VLP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 21 TACTICAL LP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 21 SPORT VLP @ 2,133MHZ (1.60V): 26 TACTICAL LP @ 2,133MHZ (1.5V): 28 Video encoding performance x264: Frames per second: Higher is better SPORT VLP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 40.44 TACTICAL LP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 40.34 SPORT VLP @ 2,133MHZ (1.60V): 40.50 TACTICAL LP @ 2,133MHZ (1.5V): 40.52 Gaming performance Batman: AC: Frames per second: Higher is better SPORT VLP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 123 TACTICAL LP @ 1,600MHZ (1.35V): 123 SPORT VLP @ 2,133MHZ (1.60V): 125 TACTICAL LP @ 2,133MHZ (1.5V): 126 The fact these modules work so well with tiny heatsinks - even when being overclocked - confirms our general feelings that all those lower speed modules with their large flashy heatsinks, are more to do with catching the attention of your wallet rather than any real cooling function. Still, the overclocking prowess of these sticks is not really the point. The low latency settings, decent performance and incredible size make this a rather desirable little set. Low-profile, low latency and low voltage - that's quite a combo, and the added versatility offered via the overclocking makes the Sport VLP a great prospect.
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In Depth: How the Liberated Pixel Cup changed gaming on Linux
Humans may be the most creative species on the planet, but we spend a lot of time doing tedious things.
Look at the internet: it's a revolutionary and disruptive technology, with the potential to change education, governments and scientific research, yet most people use it to post comments on YouTube videos of mobile phones being unboxed.
Here in the free software world, we're familiar with the collaboration opportunities that the internet brings, and many great applications have been developed by teams of programmers around the globe.
But desktop and server applications aren't the most exciting things in the world. Wouldn't it be great if all the untapped creativity of humans on the internet could be funnelled into making artistic things, such as video games?
If you've followed the Hot Games section of HotPicks over the years, you'll have discovered a few notable projects involving multiple contributors; the vast majority, however, are one-man efforts. And part of the problem is this: a developer may come up with a brilliant idea for a game, but lack the artistic flair to make it look good.
Or, conversely, a budding artist may love designing graphics for his/her ideal RPG, yet doesn't possess the technical nous to make it a playable reality.
We've seen loads of promising games let down by inadequate artwork, and heard from designers who'd love to contribute to an open source game, but don't know where to start or who to speak to.
This is where the Liberated Pixel Cup comes in. The LPC project aims to build an extensive resource of free (as in freedom) video game artwork for programmers to use. But it's more ambitious than a generic sharing system: using development phases, targets, deadlines and ratings, the LPC team have ensured that games get made, and it doesn't become a hypothetical exercise.
There are now a bunch of great-looking, professional-level games for Linux - and they're totally free software.
An epic contest for gaming freedom
OpenGameArt is a busy website that has been running since 2009, serving as a repository of user-submitted game graphics and music, along with a forum where programmers can request specific types of artwork. Earlier this year, Bart Kelsey, who runs the site, teamed up with Chris Webber of the Creative Commons, and together they fleshed out the LPC concept.
They wanted to create a fast-paced competition, whereby artists around the internet would generate as much graphic content as possible in a one-month period, and then in the following month developers would write games based on that artwork.
A core principle of the LPC is that all content is free as in freedom - that is, the graphics must be submitted under the Creative Commons BY-SA licence, which lets anyone share and modify the resources, as long as they provide attribution to the original author and share only under equally permissive licences.
Code, meanwhile, had to be under the terms of the GPL. With these requirements, the Free Software Foundation was happy to get on board and lend its support as well.
Kelsey and Webber wanted to award cash prizes for the best entries, so they set up a fundraiser; at the time of writing, it had raked in an impressive $12,256, slightly exceeding the original goal.
Then, the next step was to set up a style guide for the artwork. What sort of games should the LPC focus on? It would have been easy to let anything go, and open up the contest to all sorts of genres and artistic styles, but then it would be incredibly difficult to fit content from different authors together.
Imagine if you were trying to write a game using multiple graphics sources, and they all had different sizes, perspectives and lighting effects - it'd be a horrible mess.
So the LPC settled on 2D pixel-art graphics from a top-down view, but with a bit of perspective (60 degrees), so that you can see the front of objects. Games will be built from 32x32 pixel tile sets, with an option of smaller 16x16 sub-tiles where necessary.
Lighting should come from above, and possibly slightly to the left, so that everything doesn't look too symmetrical and samey. For characters, the dimensions should be 48x64 pixels.
This might all seem extremely specific, and force developers into producing top-down Zelda or Final Fantasy-like RPGs, but the LPC rules don't limit developers to one particular genre - they're free-to-code, side-scrolling shoot-em ups; turn-based strategy games; or anything else that takes their fancy.
For those interested in the RPG genre, however, there's a set of base tiles and 'naked' characters (see the screenshot) to act as a starting point. This makes it easier for new artists to adopt colour palettes and visual styles. You can find the style guide, base tiles and a simple HTML5 demo of a point-and-click game here.
It's just a phase
With everything in place, the contest kicked off on 1 June with phase one: artwork. This ran until the end of the month, with artists uploading their work to the OpenGameArt website. A total of 31 artists contributed to the competition, and you can find their work at http://opengameart.org/lpc-art-entries - as you can see, it's a mixed bag of static tiles, animated tiles, characters and collectable items. Phase two kicked off on 1 July, again running for a month, and focused on coding. An important requirement for the code submissions was that they should run on completely free software (ie, a GNU/Linux system that has no proprietary bits installed). All of the free content and code in the world wouldn't mean much if the end result could only run on Windows… At the start of August, the judging process began. Kelsey and Webber led the panel, asking them to rate the submissions based on their overall quality and adherence to the style guide. Unfortunately, due to various complications (see the interview over the page), the judging progress has been running rather slowly, and at the time of writing only the art submissions have been rated. The top winner, who created an attractive set of farm-based tiles (fancy writing an open source version of Harvest Moon?), scooped up a $1,500 prize. By the time you read this, the code judging phase may be complete.Our pick of the best
You can find the full list of code submissions for the Liberated Pixel Cup at http://opengameart.org/lpc-code-entries - there are 48 to try out, and most of them can be played from inside a web browser, so you don't need to fiddle around with compiling stuff and grabbing dependencies. Due to the one-month coding-time limitation, obviously none of these games are vast Zelda-like adventures, but they are lots of fun nonetheless. Here, we've selected some of our personal favourites…Volley Zombie
Volleyball meets zombie attacks in this bizarre shoot-em-up. You're challenged to play the sport, using the WASD key group to move your player around, and Space to jump up and knock the ball back with your head. But while this is going on, hoards of monsters approach you from all angles, so you have to shoot them using the arrow keys. If the monsters touch you, your health bar depletes. This game works especially well with two players sharing the keyboard: one focuses on the volleyball, and the other on wasting zombies.
Castle Defense
You might be expecting something action-filled from the title, but Castle Defense is all about using your brain. Essentially, it's a maths-based game, whereby skeletons are trying to break through your castle's towers, and you have some archers at your disposal. By solving the maths questions that appear (just type in the answers), your archers fire arrows horizontally along the screen; you start off with two archers responding to addition exercises, and on the next level there are three with subtraction questions, and so forth. The music is great, too.
Slime Attack
Green blobs of slime crawl out of a hole, meandering around the screen until they reach the princess on the other side. Using bits of fence, bait and magic spells, your job is to keep the blobs at bay. It's entertainingly silly and surprisingly tough - you're limited by the amount of fence sections you can build, and you can use magic spells only once every few seconds (due to a mana meter that depletes and restores itself). The developer has included a level design mode, adding considerable longevity to the game. It's a simple concept, executed well, and has that special 'one more go' touch.
Neverwell Moor
We're into classic top-down action-RPG territory with this game. It's beautifully presented, with a touching intro story and gorgeous pixel art, although the music is painfully repetitive. It's quite small right now - there are just a handful of items to collect and things to swap with villagers, and clearly the plot needs fleshing out more. But you can talk to people, collect coins, fight snakes with a giant mallet and explore an island - if anyone wants to expand it with more content, that'd make us very happy bunnies.
Terramancers
Imagine Reversi (aka Othello), the classic disc-flipping board game, and then make it real-time. In Terramancers, you control a character walking around a grid, and each tile you step on becomes yours. If you step on a tile that has a direct line of sight to another you own, the whole line is yours. But the computer is also racing to dominate space; once all tiles are owned, whoever took the most wins. Run it with java -jar Terramancers.jar, and you'll have to rename resources/Characters/Professor.png to its lower-case equivalent as well.
AfterImage
This is our favourite of the lot. It's also a top-down action RPG, with a great little intro, lots of polish and plenty to see and explore. The battle system is somewhat unusual: when you come across an enemy, you use the arrow keys to switch into one of four positions around it, from which you can attack. Another neat feature is the Desolation, an alternative Dark World-like version of the main map. You can switch to it with the R key, which is useful for getting past things that are blocking your way. Really, really promising.
The man at the helm
Chris Webber started the LPC, with help from OpenGameArt and the FSF. We asked him about the ups and downs of running the contest, how the judging phase is going, and what next year's LPC could look like…
Linux Format: It looks as if the fundraising attempt has exceeded its target - how is the money going to be used?
Chris Webber: I posted a blog post on this, detailing how the finances worked out. But the short answer is the money went to artists to pay for the base assets and style guide that was the basis of the Liberated Pixel Cup; and to prizes, except for 10% that went to the Free Software Foundation for handling the overhead. None of the money went back to us. Bart and I both put in over $1,000 each. But it's a cause that we, like the many others who donated, believe in.
LXF: What takes place in the judging process, and when do you expect it to be finished?
CW: There's two phases to judging, just as there's two phases to the games: judging art, and judging code. The art judging just wrapped up very recently, but the code judging has yet to be announced.
Unfortunately, as the art judging was, it's really quite delayed. This is due to a couple of reasons… first and foremost, Bart Kelsey and I are the primary people driving things. Bart had some personal matters to deal with, and I simultaneously quit Creative Commons to focus on MediaGoblin, was travelling and technically homeless for a couple of weeks right after the submission part of the LPC wrapped up (we were moving between states), and starting to push forward MediaGoblin as a full-time thing. This lead to a lot of delays in even starting things, which was frustrating for everyone.
The other problem was the kind of problem you want to have. We didn't expect so many entries, and so many great entries at that! I know it's the kind of thing you can't complain about: we got so many amazing entries, that we're struggling to judge them all. But the sheer volume of good entries we got meant that a good number of the initial people who agreed to judge couldn't handle that level of load, and it took some time to find a group of people who could. The code side of judging should be along soon, but I can't say when for sure. I'm hoping within the next month (to early November).
LXF: What have you learnt in the process of creating and running the LPC? What went especially well, and what would you have done differently?
CW: Well, we learned that the premise of the project went really well - way better than we expected, anyway! We were hoping that people would respond to the idea of the LPC. We didn't anticipate this strong a response. We built the contest along the lines of proving that collaboration in this kind of space is possible if you put enough front-loaded work into it.
The style guide was really at the core of it, and the money we put into paying for the base assets, and for having artists help us develop the style guide, really paid off.
Going through the Free Software Foundation for finances also helped a lot. I actually made some mistakes, and initially we weren't going to do everything through them, but I learned the lesson that going through a non-profit that has experience in dealing with finances just simplified a lot of things. Working with the FSF was pretty great!
And I was really happy to bridge the cultural divide of Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, OpenGameArt and Mozilla all working together on a project like this. The main thing we learned about what went wrong was that we really needed to be more prepared around judging. Next time, we'll do more planning around that so it's more smooth.
LXF: Is there going to be another next year? And will you try a different topic, like graphics for side-scrolling platformers?
CW: Signs point to yes! It's not confirmed yet, but I know at least OpenGameArt and the Free Software Foundation are interested. I'm not sure what my involvement will be, but I'll definitely be involved at least in advising and some mild co-ordination… probably not quite as heavily involved as I was this year. But the success of LPC has also stirred up a number of volunteers who already want to help next year.
If it happens next year, we'll probably have an entirely new style for a new set of games. I can't say what that would be at this time… we've only had vague conversations. Sidescrollers are a popular suggestion, so is isometric-style games, and some people are interested in 3D games. I think the latter might be harder to do, but there's a strong community of 3D people in the Blender community that maybe we could tap into.
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